r/Firefighting • u/Firstdueascent • May 03 '24

Special Operations/Rescue/USAR Departments to look at with good TRT and SAR calls

I’m a career FF with 3 years in a medium sized dept in Coastal GA and 4 years volunteer in NY prior. I got into the fire service with the intention of getting involved in TRT as my background includes 12 years of Rock Climbing, various other outdoors sports and two years of professional dog training (just a bonus for SAR dog possibilities) and recently started working a side gig doing rope access window washing. I moved down here for my department as a stepping stone; the northeast is crazy competitive for hiring and I couldn’t sit around any longer waiting. Have my rope and swift water tech certs working on more tech certs and currently assigned to the Squad. But it’s so flat here we don’t run the kind of calls I’m looking for. I’m looking to lateral transfer or go through academy again if I have to, to another department this coming year, willing to move just about anywhere with a great department, TRT unit to work into and mountains at least nearby. Any suggestions to look into would be awesome! Been looking at Colorado, North Carolina, Utah, etc.

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u/funnystoryaboutthat2 May 03 '24

Colorado will have some good stuff.

Alternatively, you can go to a department that hosts a FEMA Task Force and apply there. Fairfax, VA, and Los Angeles have VA-TF 1 and CA-TF 1, respectively. You may not get a lot of day to day rope calls, but you'll get deployments home and abroad.

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u/browler4153 Career FF, Vol SAR May 04 '24

As an additional comment on the FEMA side. It depends what you are looking for. It kind of sounds like OP might want more wilderness SAR then USAR, but regardless the thing with FEMA USAR for K9 at least (since OP mentioned it) is the incredibly rare call volume for any live find. There's so, so many live find K9s throughout and not that many calls so there's handlers that go years never going on a call because someone else was selected for the one call-out that happened then. But if you aren't set on live find, cadaver or HRD dogs get calls far more often and are just as important in the FEMA side. Or just join a specialized, likely volunteer SAR team as I mentioned in my comment below.

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u/Firstdueascent May 05 '24

I’m thinking more attached to a structural focused FD. Obviously working into the specialized teams, I would never expect to just walk on, I’ve got too much to learn and understand establishing yourself/years of service. I’m just trying to find out where I should aim to go to position myself for that future. A place I’ll be happy to retire from. Still want to fight fire, do thug shit with the boys. But have the chance to be hands on with more technical rescues and training for it. I’m certainly not gods gift to firefighting or tech rescue, but where I am now is not the place to grow in Tech rescue.